Systems which involve multiple step label applications in applying several different types of labels to various surfaces on a container necessitate control of the container position so that each particular label is consistently applied to each container. In the distillery, some food processing and pharmaceutical industries, it is often required to place a security seal or tax excise stamp on the top of the container or bottle in conjunction with other labels on the body and neck of each container.
With these types of labelling operations, there is often a need to shift the bottle on the conveyor while maintaining control on its position to accomplish a step in the labelling operation, such as applying a tax excise stamp on the top of the container. In other uses for container conveying systems, it may be necessary to shift a bottle or container laterally of the conveyor to accomplish other operations, such as taking a single row of conveyed containers and shifting every other one in a direction opposite to that of the other containers or simply shifting every other container out of the row laterally to now provide two parallel rows of containers. In instances where it is important to maintain container registration, control on its position, or even spacing between containers, then the shifting must be accomplished in an accurate, controlled manner.
Accomplishing a shift of containers on the conveyor, while maintaining control on container position, has been difficult to achieve. For example, well-known approaches such as using deflector plates to move containers in one direction or another as they are conveyed, is satisfactory insofar as establishing new lines of conveyed containers; however, it is necessary to incorporate into the newly formed line a bottle registration or bottle spotter mechanism to re-register the conveyed containers.
In instances where bottle position orientation is not important, yet it is still desired to divide a single row of conveyed containers into two or more rows or to regroup plural rows of conveyed containers, it is possible to obtain a machine which is timed to push conveyed bottles laterally on the conveyor. The difficulty with such pushing mechanisms is that at higher speeds they tend to upset conveyed bottles as they contact them to move them laterally of the conveyor.